William Shakespeare's 450th birthday: Walking from Stratford-upon-Avon to the Globe Theatre

Sarah Baxter

Sarah Baxter is part-time Associate Editor of Wanderlust travel magazine and a part-time freelance travel journalist and editor. She has written many features for The Independent, as well as for other newspapers, magazines, blogs and books. She loves exploring the great outdoors, and when she's not thinking travel, she's likely lacing up for a run instead.

I felt it was important to set the tone early, even over the
muesli. This B&B repast was fuelling the start of an
educational ambulation. My boyfriend, Paul, two of my oldest school
friends and I were in Stratford-upon-Avon to tackle the first
section of Shakespeare's Way, a 146-mile trail from Stratford to
London's Globe Theatre, through the heart of England. It's a bit
spurious: even the guidebook calls it a "journey of imagination",
confessing it's "the route the poet may have taken" on his journeys
between home town and capital; there's scant proof. But, with this
week marking the Bard's 450th birthday, and as the world still
knows little about him (including his actual date of birth, which
may or may not have been today), it seemed as timely and
appropriate a way as any to celebrate.

With brains struggling to recall GCSE English, our merry
foursome set off. We started at the beginning: Shakespeare's
birthplace. This wattle-and-daub house on Henley Street is where he
grew up and has long been ground zero for Will-grims: following a
campaign (backed by, among others, Charles Dickens), the house was
bought for the nation in 1847 and is now a museum. From here, we
wended through Tudor Stratford, passing King Edward VI School
(where William studied), the former homes of his daughter and
granddaughter (Hall's Croft and Nash's House) and the remains of
New Place, the grand mansion he built, which was demolished in
1759. By the time we reached Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare
was buried in 1616, we'd walked just one mile but covered his whole
life, birth to death. What more was there?

A lot, actually. Even if no one knows whether Shakespeare
travelled this exact path, we know he was inspired by the landscape
of his youth. His works are rich in references to its flowers,
animals and rural characters. Just after leaving Stratford, I
noticed a glove, trodden into the mud; as Shakespeare's father,
John, was a glove-maker, I liked to think it was a sign: we were
going the right way.

In fact, there's evidence that Shakespeare stayed at Oxford's
Crown Tavern en route to London, so the first 60 miles - the
section we were tracing, along the River Stour and across the
Cotswolds to the university city - are the route's most valid.
After Oxford, Shakespeare's Way crosses the Chilterns and joins the
Thames; it's unlikely that William followed the same course, but
better to be inauthentic than hike alongside the M40.

Our first day was like an opening act, full of promise, setting
the scene: ploughed fields, narrow lanes, village greens, steeples
and old oak trees. We passed a man cleaning his leaded windows in
handsome Halford, who asked what we were up to. He looked sceptical
when we told him that we were following Shakespeare, but pointed us
onwards, to cross the old Roman Fosse Way. Clearly, millennia of
men have marched here before. Paul was our own Henry V,
leading us unto the breach (being best at following our guidebook's
often ponderous directions). We happy few, we band of brothers,
strode behind him, enjoying the walk's simple pleasures: the roll
of sylvan green; fields edged with swaying teasels; quaint porches
framed by rambling rose.

Our first picnic spot, a grassy hollow beside the Stour, had an
amphitheatrical quality, though there was no literary conversation
- Talton Mill Farm Shop's lemon cake proved too distracting. And,
later, when I started spouting Shakespeare, I turned to find the
boys weren't listening, but lobbing conkers at each other instead.
Just like being back at school, then.

On day two of our three-day tramp, I felt Shakespeare receding.
In Whichford Wood I quoted some As You Like It ("Are not these
woods more free from peril than the envious court? ...Our life
exempt from public haunt finds tongues in trees, books in the
running brooks"). But my words were drowned by three buzzards
overhead. In Lidstone, we read of its former inn, which served
travellers on the London Road; perhaps William stopped for a pot of
ale? But no evidence remains in the sleepy hamlet.

We may not have found much of the Bard, but we did meet The
King. Just off the route lay the Rollright Stones, a Bronze Age
site that most of the world has forgotten. A man at a trestle table
charged us £1 to view the 5,000-year-old stone circle (once
described, unkindly, as "77 stumps and lumps of leprous
limestone"), the Whispering Knights dolmen and the solitary King
Stone. This place is beloved of dowsers and reputedly ripples with
Mother Earth's energy. Just what we needed: we were 25 miles into
our journey, still 35 miles to go.

On our third and final day we met Churchill. After entering the
parkland of 18th-century Ditchley Mansion and joining a stretch of
Akeman Street (once a key Roman road), Shakespeare's Way vaults
into the vast grounds of Blenheim. Sir Winston Churchill was born
here 140 years ago, and proposed to Clementine in the estate's
Temple of Diana. The Way took us via the Column of Victory and
landscaped lake, the Baroque palace an overwhelming presence to our
side. We didn't go in, continuing instead through pretty Woodstock
to Bladon church, where Churchill's simple tombstone stands.

It had been a walk of heavyweights, which made following the
Thames into historic Oxford an apt ending. Less satisfying was our
last stop: the Crown Tavern on Cornmarket Street. The 14th-century
inn was once owned by Shakespeare's friend John Davenant, and
William is known to have stayed (and possibly to have dallied with
Davenant's wife). Sadly, it's now indistinguishable, squeezed above
a betting shop behind an 18th-century façade.

However, that isn't quite the end of the story. Parts of the
Elizabethan inn remain hidden here, and following discussions in
January, the Oxford Preservation Trust is working towards opening
these Painted Rooms to the public. Another fragment of the
Shakespeare story revealed. For now, though – as with so much
connected to this famous but enduringly mysterious man – we had to
use our imaginations.